While Rhocanth wiped his face and sat in silence, Lythe was silent as well. She leaned against the tree and let her gaze wander to the treetops and the hints of twilight sky beyond the leaves, rather than watch the boy as if she expected anything from him. Only when he began to speak on his own did she look to him again, watching with sympathetic eyes as he rose, paced, and went from misery to anger and back to sorrow again.
"I don't want to be anything," he murmured earnestly. "I just want to see my mother." And oh, how he sounded like so many new Legionnaires she'd known, mourning his death and longing for his old life. On top of that tragedy was his recruitment into the Wardens, a sudden complication when it should have been an honor, for he hadn't even had time to start coping with everything that had thrust him to the surface to begin with. In the Deep Roads he'd been too busy simply trying to survive and find his way out; now everything had finally caught up with him.
"And a part of you always will," she answered softly, finally allowing herself to sit and propping her elbows on her bent knees. She understood his grief, but came from a world where one did not have the luxury of sugarcoating reality. Lythe would not offer him hollow platitudes. "Remember how I asked you not to tell me anything of my old Houses, if you knew them? I still think of them, too, but I had to learn not to do it too often, or let it distract me. You'll have to learn too, eventually, but that doesn't mean you have to forget everything completely. The city, your friends, your family -- it'll always be a part of you."
There was more she could have said, too, something for every worry and frustration Rhocanth had voiced, but left it at that. She'd followed him to offer empathy, not a lecture on harsh truths.